PaidContent.org, the indispensable online resource for anything having to do with digital content, had a note today congratulating Google for allowing CNET News back in to the fold of media the search company deemed access-worthy. Fourteen months ago, CNET reporter Elinor Mills ran a search on Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealing some innocuous, but personal info, which she deemed newsworthy. Writing about it then, I chastised Google’s PR guy for apparently succumbing to whims of his thin-skinned bosses by banishing the news outlet for a year.

Water under the toolbar. Purgatory for CNET appears to have ended. Ms. Mills wrote today’s CNET piece touting Google touting the size of its searchable database, but this time featuring an interview with the previously slighted CEO. Smart move, Google. Blackballing reporters from legitimate news organizations generally does not produce the desired result. (And there are other ways to skin a cnet.)

…is the word Fortune magazine (and former NY Times) gadget guru Peter Lewis uses to describe the much-hyped birthchild of Apple & Motorola with Cingular as its midwife. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and even vlogged about it on this blog.

With all the hype surrounding the boffo news conference to introduce this new cell phone that also plays 100 iTunes, little can be done to sway the jaded critical press if the product doesn’t deliver. In fact, too much advance hyperbole can have a deleterious impact on the tenor of a product’s critical reviews.

Marketers might be better served with the element of surprise, as was the case with the Nano, an elegant wafer-like surprise bi-product of the same over-hyped news conference. As in our business, there’s much to be said about under promising and over delivering.

Business Week’s Stephen Baker who tag-teams with colleague Heather Green to stay on top of the trends in the blogosphere, picked up on a survey of PR pros’ feelings toward blogs. Yes, another survey to generate media exposure for the survey funding company (Blog Relations), which manifests, in this case, on the company’s own blog called The Angel Blog. I know. It’s very confusing.

Anyway, the proprietors of Blog Relations posted, in true blogging fashion, the unedited results of its survey of 50. Key findings include:

“…eight out of ten believe that businesses could benefit from setting up their own blogs.”

“..eight out of ten PR pros also think that blogs, if used correctly, can be a useful communication tool for businesses.”

“…although 56 percent of PRs say that they have never pitched a blogger, 46 per cent of those same people think that there are already a ‘good number of influential blogs.’”

We’re sure to see much more of this. This one, however, probably doesn’t carry much weight given the small size of its sample - 50 PR pros.